MUSINGS ON BASEBALL FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER

Impressions Derek Holland Could Have Done Last Night That Actually Would Have Impressed Me

Last night during the World Series, our favorite announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver interviewed Derek Holland for like, the entire goddamn third inning. I don’t even really remember what they talked about. Something something mustache something something video games something pizza party. I’m unclear on the finer points of the conversation because I was too busy being completely baffled at how insanely ridiculous the whole thing was. Remember, this was during the third inning of a World Series game. It wasn’t during a rain delay or pitching change—real life professional baseballers were playing a World Series game live while all this was happening. Don’t get me wrong (or, go ahead, do—see if I care), Holland seems like a perfectly interesting young man. He has a funny nickname, he has that crap on his face, and he does mediocre impressions simple in execution and previously popularized a great deal of years ago by Saturday Night Live. Holland first offered the nation his rendition of Harry Caray, and it was only slightly more annoying than every other time you’ve heard the exact same thing. Then, in a stroke of broadcasting genius, Buck handed over the reins to Holland at the end of the inning, giving the young rascal an opportunity to throw to commercial in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger. A Pulitzer was won last night, I’m sure.

Indeed, Harry Caray and Arnold Schwarzenegger are not the most inspired or freshest of choices for comedic impression, but I got to wondering who Holland could have actually imitated last night in order to impress (ha!) my sensibilities. The maybe or maybe not exaggerated results are as follows:

Truman Capote

Doing his best Brussels sprout voice, Holland channels the catty intellectual author while annoucing the end of the inning.

“I’m being told that in this brutish waste of time you call baseball, that was what one would describe as a double-out-play. You’re about to watch commercials on Fox, you illiterate philistines.”

Werner Herzog

Similar to the Austrian dialect of Governor Schwarzenegger, but deeper, slower, and more pronounced and enunciated, Holland sends the audience to commercial with an alarming portrayal of the ecstatic filmmaker.

“You have just witnessed the so-called truth of a double play in the American sport of baseball. Disappointment and despair lingers in the St. Louis dugout, as the participants of the violence reflect upon their misfortune. You’re watching the World Series on Fox, as Holliday lumbers like a dejected toad into the barren wasteland of loneliness that is left field.”

Butthead

From the irreverent television cartoon, of course. You know, because Holland kind of looks like him.